


The Sum of Our Scars

by ElDiablito_SF



Series: Lightbringer Verse [6]
Category: Black Sails
Genre: Bathing/Washing, Foot Massage, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Multi, Surprises everywhere!!!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-29
Updated: 2017-05-29
Packaged: 2018-11-06 15:04:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,550
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11038632
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ElDiablito_SF/pseuds/ElDiablito_SF
Summary: Unfortunate circumstances force Flint to sail to Madi's camp alone while Silver and Thomas remain in Bristol together.  Surprises await everyone on both sides of the ocean.





	The Sum of Our Scars

The man who had once been Captain Flint, scourge of the seas, looked up at Thomas with the saddest eyes he’d ever seen, like a kicked puppy or an equally unbearable substitute.

“I can’t leave him like this,” James muttered, hand stroking Silver’s sweat-soaked brow. “I should put the trip off for a few days.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Thomas said gently, his hand squeezing one of James’ sagging shoulders. “His fever may not break for a few days, and even so, he will not be well enough to sail with you to Madi’s camp. And Madi is counting on you. You must go.”

“But what if something happens to him?”

“You do not trust leaving him here in my care?” Thomas did his best to keep the offended air out of his tone. He was not certain he’d succeeded.

“It’s not that,” James muttered, allowing his forehead to come to rest against Thomas’, even as his hand still clung to Silver’s while he lay feverish, shivering, drifting in and out of consciousness in their shared bed. “Of course I trust you with him. It will be difficult being away from you both,” James admitted with a sigh. “But soon I’ll be with Madi. And you are right, she’s counting on us to supply her camp reliably.”

It had been a sublime pleasure having Madi back at the manor at Christmas, Thomas recalled. He did not think he had missed the feminine energy as much as he did until Madi appeared and ordered everyone around like the Queen that he and her parents had raised her to be. He only wished he could see her more often than once a year. He envied James a bit, that part of their relationship: the sea did not divide them. Just like with Silver, it had united them. Personally, Thomas turned green and often returned his dinner to Poseidon as soon as encountering even remotely inclement weather upon a vessel.

After only a bit more ado, he was kissing James farewell and fixing his scarf around his neck, and kissing him again (for good luck), and then Thomas was on his way back to the bedroom and the man who had remained his patient to tend.

Thomas had a basin of cold water fetched with some fresh towels and sat down upon the bed, applying a wet cloth to Silver’s fevered brow. His skin burned to the touch. It had started the night before, when Silver’s posture made obvious that the pain he was in wasn’t the usual discomfort caused by his lopsided inconvenience. A doctor was called, who had immediately threatened to bleed the patient, only to be summarily dismissed with a few choice words compliments of James. Still, Silver wasn’t the first patient Thomas would tend to, and, whilst no trained physician, he had sufficient faith in his own ability to watch over someone as they convalesced. So long as the fever broke.

Silver moaned and twisted between the sheets that were rapidly becoming soaked in his perspiration. “James…”

Thomas frowned and shook out the cloth, making sure it felt cool enough to press to his brow again. He needed to help cool Silver’s body down without exacerbating his symptoms. His patient thrashed about again, knocking the compress off his head, causing Thomas to contemplate actually putting him back into restraints. But he quickly chased those thoughts away.

“James!” Silver moaned again.

“James is not here,” Thomas whispered, dipping a new towel into the water basin and running it down Silver’s neck and glistening chest. “But I am, and I’ll take good care of you,” he promised, drawing the wet cloth down Silver’s arm. It lay limp and weak in his grasp, but the lines of his musculature were as magnificent as a Michelangelo, breathed into life from cold marble. 

“He left… he left me…” Silver’s voice was the most pathetic thing Thomas had encountered since the look James had given him earlier at this very bedside.

“No, you silly goose. You’re delirious. James didn’t leave you.”

“He _hates_ me!” Silver spat out, tossing in the bed, knocking the compress off his head again.

“Stay still, you madman,” Thomas pressed him back into the mattress, once more contemplating the brass rings over their heads.

“He hates me, he will never forgive me. Never!”

“John!” Thomas took Silver’s face into his hands. “Focus!” Blue eyes attempted to do as they were bidden. Silver’s eyebrows knitted together and he squinted up at Thomas. “You are very ill. You are running quite the impressive fever. Please, just let me take care of you.”

“Thomas…” Silver muttered weakly, emerging from his fever-dream.

Thomas sighed in relief and pressed the cool cloth back against Silver’s forehead, brushing the hair back that clung to his perspiration-covered brow and neck. He had seen others in the grips of a similar fever simply from overexertion. He imagined this wasn’t the first time this had happened to John Silver. However it was that he had contorted and cajoled his limbs into day-to-day function, it must have done quite the number on his body, and the summer heat could not have been helping.

“Try to relax,” he whispered, attempting to soothe his patient so he could do a better job examining and tending to him. “You need to rest.”

“Did he sail on without me?” Silver asked, still in a state of confusion.

“He did,” Thomas admitted. “I insisted.” He dipped a towel into the basin again and began to wipe the perspiration from Silver’s neck and chest. He was much more familiar with Silver’s body now that they were becoming… whatever it was that they had become. Still, it was a marvel to behold, and it took some effort to concentrate on the fact that he was attempting to succor the man, not give in to each of his licentious thoughts. 

Silver’s body was blessedly going more lax under his touch, Silver’s eyes were closing again, his chest rising and falling with shallow breaths.

“Thank you,” Thomas heard Silver mutter.

“Try to get some sleep,” he suggested, drawing the sweat-soaked sheet carefully away to expose Silver’s good leg. 

He adjusted the sheet as much to preserve Silver’s modesty as to save himself from playing the worst nursemaid in the universe. He proceeded to draw the wet towel down Silver’s exposed leg, feeling the tightly wound muscles beneath his hands. He pressed deeper into Silver’s thigh and found it to be hard as a rock.

“My god, your poor body,” he muttered, more to himself than to Silver. 

His eyes traveled to the crutch, lying at the foot of the bed where Silver could always easily locate it. He hated to imagine what the use of that thing over the years had done to Silver’s physique. It had to have taken its toll. He made a mental note to look into a proper prosthesis when Silver was sufficiently recuperated. Refocusing on the task at hand, Thomas attempted to massage some of the tightness out of Silver’s seized up muscles and ligaments, but it was really no use - not in his current state, gripped by the fever. He would deal with all of this in a sequential way, not like some god damn amateur. 

He changed the compress for a newly rewetted, colder one, and pushed the basin away. Silver shifted once more, his body twitching, his brow furrowing. “James!” he called out again. That sound was tearing Thomas’ heart into a thousand pieces. How did it happen that he had let this phantom from James’ past not only into their bed, but also under his skin?

Thomas lay down next to Silver and wrapped his body around Silver’s much smaller frame. “Hush now, I’m here,” he whispered against Silver’s earlobe. “You're safe.”

***

Thomas remembered the first night Silver spent under their roof with crystalline clarity. One doesn’t easily forget such a sight. A man rose from the sea. No, a Bull from the Sea had risen and deposited Silver right upon his doorstep. This rival who had merely been a concept now rendered into delightful flesh.

And James had attempted to run from him.

“You have to speak to him,” Thomas had whispered, wrapping all his limbs around James, attempting to mold his body against his as if he could feel it all slipping away, just grains of sand falling through his fingers, unholdable as time. “You must have so much to say to each other.”

“Why didn’t you make him leave?” James grumbled.

“Is that what you would have _wanted_?”

“I don’t know… I don’t know what it is I want. I… it’s up to Madi, anyways, she’s his…”

“He did not come here for Madi,” Thomas interrupted. “He as much as admitted that to me. He knows it is over between them. But what is between the two of you, well… How could it end before it properly begun?”

“I cannot see him. I cannot speak to him.” A shudder shook James’ body and Thomas pressed his lips to the freckled covered skin of his shoulder.

“You cannot run from him either.” Thomas allowed himself to savor this, this closeness, this respite before the oncoming storm. John Silver may be only a man, but he was also a force of nature. That force had now come to sweep James away. And if Thomas loved him, he had to let him go. _Just as Silver had once done._

“I can try,” James said weakly.

“I know you loved him,” Thomas said with quiet resolve. “Perhaps you love him still.”

“Thomas…”

“I have never been a jealous man, James.”

“Thomas… I would never be parted from you again. Ask him to leave tomorrow.”

“I… don’t think I shall be doing that.”

“Thomas!”

He had kissed James on his lying mouth then, for the lies of omission he spoke were lies nevertheless.

“Ask him to leave,” James repeated, his voice pleading and tremulous.

Thomas sighed and held him closer. “You’ll have to ask him yourself, my love. If you decide tomorrow that is what you truly want.”

***

“Your fever has broken.” Silver blinked his eyes open a few times, finally fixing them upon Thomas’ gaunt face. “Drink this water. I will have a bath drawn for you. I had salts brought from Bath that I think will be beneficial in aiding with some of your muscle tension.”

“What the fuck,” was all Silver managed. Thomas did not look particularly amused as he shoved a glass towards Silver’s parched lips. “I mean, whatever you think is best?”

“Hmm, yes, you’d better let me do all the thinking.”

It was so strange, having Thomas handle him this way, his entire, weary, naked body, as if he was nothing but a marionette to be turned either which way. No, the strange part was that there was nothing strange about it. If there was one thing Silver trusted Thomas with implicitly, it was his body. Sure, they had never been alone like this, and that part had felt strange. But Silver always felt only half-himself when he was away from his captain, regardless of who was keeping him company.

Slowly, carefully, Thomas helped lower Silver into the hot water and sat himself down upon a low stool by the side of the basin.

“Would you like me to help you wash?” he asked, offering Silver a washcloth and expensive smelling French soap. 

“I could use help with my hair,” Silver admitted. In truth, he could use help with a lot more than his hair. His entire body still ached from fighting off the fever for days. The weakness and lassitude crept into the very marrow of his bones.

Thomas hummed in contentment as he moved behind Silver and gathered his thick mane of curls into his hands. “James used to have hair almost this long. Did he ever wear it long when you knew him before?”

Silver closed his eyes and allowed his body to sink into the comfort of the water and Thomas’ touch. He allowed Thomas’ words to wash over him too, as soothing as the water around his tired limbs. The French soap floated among the suds between his thighs. 

“He wore it longer than he wears it today,” Silver smiled, remembering the flames of Flint’s hair against the blue of the Caribbean skies. “He had this little ponytail. It was… oddly endearing for… Well, him.”

“What was he like?” Thomas asked, pouring water over Silver’s long hair, soaking it thoroughly.

“James?”

“Captain Flint.”

Despite his weakened state, Silver’s cock gave an enthusiastic jolt at that name, as if attempting to hoist the black.

“He was… A bit of a madman, a bit of a visionary. Charismatic, for such an asshole.” Silver smiled as he spoke. “He cared deeply about not becoming the villain of his own tale. He was an idealist and somehow simultaneously the worst and best of men.” He paused, noticing that Thomas’ fingers in his hair also halted on their path. Thomas then picked the soap up from under the water and began to work it up into a lather before applying it to Silver’s hair. “I loved him,” Silver continued, more quietly. “I loved all of him. The madman and the visionary. I loved the darkness. And the light… so much light. My entire soul was alight with a celestial flame when…”

He stopped speaking when he noticed his eyes were getting too hot again, as if the fever had returned. Thomas’ fingers were rinsing the soap out of the soaked strands of his hair.

“He will never forgive me, will he?” Silver asked, even quieter than before.

Behind him, Thomas gathered up his hair and wrung the water out of it, twisting it up against the nape of Silver’s neck. “Well, you’re here, aren’t you?”

Silver chuckled at Thomas’ generosity. “He can _love_ me without forgiving me,” he spoke in a thick voice. “That is what happened with Madi, and in the end, I still ended up losing her.”

“Madi,” Thomas whispered into the back of Silver’s head, “has forgiven you. Hasn’t she?”

Silver shivered and Thomas’ arms came to wrap around him. He let his head, wet hair and all, fall back against Thomas’ broad shoulders.

“James loves you,” Thomas whispered against the back of Silver’s neck. His lips were dry and warm against his skin that still flushed from the heat of the bathwater. “You are beautiful and dangerous, and fiercely intelligent, and utterly infuriating. He loves you and… he will forgive you, if he hasn't already.”

“And you?” Silver asked, earnestly, turning his head so he could look into Thomas’ darkened eyes. “Will you ever forgive me?”

Thomas leaned in, taking Silver’s lower lip between his teeth, then gently drawing their mouths over each other in a deep kiss. His hand trailed up and down Silver’s neck, caressed his chest, dipped softly under the water and ran up the inside of his thigh, his thumb slotting against the indent of Silver’s groin.

“I’d very much like to take you to bed,” Thomas whispered breathlessly, pulling his mouth off of Silver’s. “May I?”

***

The trip to Madi’s camp felt interminable. James had forgotten what it was like, to man the seas alone. He wasn’t truly alone, granted, for many in his crew had been loyally with them from the very beginning, when Thomas had the brilliant idea to use some of the cache funds to free former seamen from debtor’s prison. Hardened, experienced men, who followed James and Madi into battle for no other reason than they were now free, and they gladly served freedom to others where they could.

He harried the crew, he chased the winds, he wanted to get to the camp in record time so that he could see Madi and head back as soon as the seas and politeness would allow. She’d understand. She had been more gracious than James ever had the right to expect… considering. She had loved John. He had been her husband.

Well, James was her husband now, wasn’t he?

Two of Madi’s men met him at the beach, as always, to help load the goods and lead the way to the camp’s hidden location. It was getting rather large, James observed, and soon it would be difficult to hide something that was morphing into a functional town. Madi had transformed this place the same way she had stormed into his life and transformed it too, into a garden from the desert. 

His Maroon Queen ran towards him and threw herself into his embrace, as she often did after a long separation. Beaming, radiant, a bit more tired about the eyes perhaps, but no less happy to see James for it.

“Where is John?” she asked, pulling away and noticing a very glaring omission at James’ side. “What have you done to him?”

“ _Done_ to him?” James pulled back, utterly offended. “He fell ill. Thomas insisted I sail on without him, while he tended to him back in Bristol.”

“Oh, how awful for you, my poor captain!” The spirited punch she had given James reminded him of how much he missed their morning sparring sessions. “But,” she continued, looping her arm through his, and beginning to walk him through the camp, “I’m not entirely sorry he isn’t with you. There is something I’ve been wanting to tell you, and not at all sure how to bring it up.” She stopped and looked up at James with worry in her eyes. “It is good news, I think you will see it that way.”

“I admit, you have me currently quite worried,” James confessed.

“Come,” she took his arm again. “There’s someone I’d like you to meet. Someone I’d like to have _Thomas_ meet some day. Perhaps you can bring him here next time?”

“Thomas? You know he hates the sea.”

“This is worth traveling for.”

“Madi…” He was afraid. He had not remembered the last time he was this afraid. Perhaps the day that Madi and Thomas had gone to Bath together and left him alone with John Silver.

She gestured to one of the other women, who ducked into her tent and came out carrying a toddler with lustrous wild curls, milk-chocolate skin, and eyes that were as blue as the heavens on a summer’s day. Madi took the little girl in her arms and braced her against her own hip.

“James, this is Mimi. It is shortened from Miranda.”

Fifteen different emotions hit him at the same time as fifteen different thoughts galloped through the field of his mind like wild horses.

“She’s beautiful, Madi. And… whose is she?”

“Mine.”

“No, I mean…”

Madi interrupted him with a full bodied laugh. “Yours, of course!” She elbowed him playfully. “ _Husband_.” She nodded towards the little girl. “Mimi, this is James. He’s one of your daddies. Can you say ‘daddy’?”

“Mama,” the little one said, sucking on three of her fingers at the same time.

“Close enough,” James muttered, marveling at the little creature before him. “Madi… How…? When?”

She gave him a long look. “My last night in Bristol. Before we had first taken me to this camp.”

“This entire time… We had no idea.”

“Men are not known to be very observant,” she shrugged.

“Does _he_ know?”

“He has no inkling. I’m telling you first. I always meant to tell you first.” She paused and pressed closer to James. “It was just that… Well, you and he had become so inseparable again. And I did not want this to come between you. You will not let it, will you? I was really hoping you would be happy about this. Thomas had always been nagging us to make him a baby, and well, this one is pretty cute, no?”

“I used to think about this, you know,” James smiled, reaching out to touch the wild curls on the little girl’s head, tucking them behind her ears that were just as tiny and adorable as he had anticipated. “What your children might look like, yours and his.”

Madi’s smile spread and her eyes softened even more as she took James’ hand into her own. “I mean it, James. I could not wish for a better father for Mimi than you.”

“Oh, yes? When do I get to teach her how to use the sword?” James grinned.

“How dare you, sir!” Madi exclaimed, seemingly scandalized. “I’ll teach her that myself!”

James squeezed her hand with his fingers and kissed her forehead. “Thomas is going to spoil her rotten. And he’d happily puke all over my deck for the opportunity to do so.”

***

Silver’s skin was warm and pliant under his touch as Thomas lay him back out upon the bed. He had thrown a towel down to catch the moisture from Silver's long, dripping hair. And then he ran his hands all the way down his good leg, kneading at the overworked muscles there that he had hoped the salts and the hot water had managed to begin loosening up. Silver’s face certainly looked relaxed, placid like a lake.

He sighed under the pressure of Thomas’ hands. “Mmmm… you really know what you’re doing.” Silver’s back arched as Thomas scraped his nails along the sole of his foot.

“Well, you know, in my day I was quite the renown libertine, Mr. Silver. I can navigate my way around a man’s body.”

Silver chuckled and opened his eyes, locking gazes with Thomas as he pressed the pad of his thumb right under the ball of Silver’s foot. “ _Fuck_. That feels incredible.”

“So much weight this part bears,” Thomas said softly, “at times, you very likely no longer even think about it, if you ever did. There is only so much weight an object can bear before it breaks. You have to release the tension.” Silver moaned softly again as Thomas’ thumb pressed against the instep of his foot, fingers wrapping around the tendons of his arch.

“You are very good at _that_ as well,” Silver said with a shy smile. “Helping me release… _ah!_... the built-up tension.”

Thomas observed the sheet move over Silver’s groin, gauging his gradual arousal. “We don’t have to do anything else,” he said, carefully. “I know that it might seem… feel, even, strange… without James present, but I need you to know, John…” He stopped, letting his hands knead into the tendons of Silver’s foot, causing his body to arch up and shudder.

“...yes?”

“I would not ask you to leave, even if he were not here.”

Silver’s eyes burned bright, framed by the wild mane of damp curls. “Thank you, my Lord.”

“You don’t have to call me that.”

“I know. I like it.”

Silver’s arm unfurled slowly towards Thomas. Many months ago, he watched those same arms unfurl to enfold James in them, and felt only the iota of the desire that burned in the pit of his belly now.

“Am I allowed to touch you, my Lord?”

A lightning bolt shot through Thomas’ body and he crawled forward across their rather extravagant bed until Silver could embrace him with his extended arm.

“He would enjoy being here to see this,” Silver whispered against his lips with a devilish grin.

Thomas hummed with approval into his kiss as Silver opened for him, allowing his tongue the slow and sure trespass into his own mouth. He was becoming very well acquainted with that mouth. The shape of it, the width and depth of it, the way those teeth felt when sinking into willing flesh. Silver’s hands slipped under the loose hem of Thomas’ shirt, fingers pressed gently into the flesh around his waist.

“May I take this off?” Silver asked, hands sliding upwards across Thomas’ ribs.

“You may,” Thomas replied after initial hesitation. He could appreciate that Silver had taken so well to his training, and yet, without James here to act as their buffer, he felt strangely vulnerable and exposed. Even with his clothes firmly on.

He allowed Silver to lift his shirt over his head and then tossed it aside, letting their bodies fall against one another, seeking heat and comfort in the trading of soft, languid kisses that neither of them was in a hurry to separate from. 

Silver’s hands glided up his back, stopping underneath his shoulderblades, fingers uncertain and gentle against the raised skin there. Thomas pulled back, unwilling to disentangle, unsure of how to proceed.

“Are these from the plantation?” Silver whispered into the skin of Thomas’ neck as his fingers traced over the old scars.

“No. From Bedlam.”

Silver’s breath settled over Thomas’ collarbones. “I’m so sorry.”

“You weren’t the cause of them.”

“The things you’ve been through. For him. I often dismissed you as being nothing but a spoiled Lordling, but nothing could be further from the truth.”

Thomas trembled and slowly turned over, presenting his back to Silver’s soft gaze. “We are more than the sum of our scars, aren’t we, John?” Only the feel of warm lips tracing the path of old hurt was his response.

***

James had sailed the _Miranda_ into the port of Bristol in the middle of the day, not giving a damn who might see him come ashore without any haul of fish. He could not afford to dilly dally about such things. He needed to see… Well, Silver. He needed to see him and say to him, “John, you have created a beautiful life.” He needed to see if Silver was even alive to be seen.

His step got firmer and steadier as he approached the manor, throwing the front doors asunder and thundering up the stairs into the privacy of their shared bedroom. Marlowe, that rude feline, dashed past his legs as soon as he creaked open the door and forestalled him to the bed upon which Thomas and John lay fully dressed, John’s head and a book all propped up on Thomas’ chest.

“Accept the things to which fate binds you, and love the people with whom fate brings you together, but do so with all your heart,” Thomas was reciting just as James walked into the room.

“Well, if you two aren’t a sight for sore eyes,” he beamed, walking up to the bed, and taking the _Meditations_ out of Thomas’ hand. “Did you exhaust yourselves while I was away?”

“We saved some reserves for you,” Silver smiled at him with his oceanic eyes.

“Before you expend any of your reserves, you should perhaps save them for a naval voyage.”

“But you just returned,” Thomas pointed out with a confused frown.

“Aye. But there is a little girl on that island, who is the luckiest little girl in the world, because she has not one, not two, but four people in her life who are going to love her and dote on her and spoil her rotten.”

“Madi has a baby?” Thomas leapt up.

“Madi has a one year old,” James corrected, looking over at Silver.

“Oh,” Silver opened his mouth and looked helplessly at James.

“Oh?” Thomas glanced over at him. “Oh!” He turned back towards James. “Well!” he threw at Silver, climbing out of bed to give James his welcome-back kiss. “Good then, I knew we were keeping him around for a legitimate reason!”

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I do not like children and I do not endorse having children LOL. The only way a child should be raised is if you're an awesome foursome consisting of two pirate kings, a queen, and a lord. 
> 
> Disclaimer on the disclaimer: I have a reputation to uphold, okay, I don't actually judge anyone for having children. (Unless they're a truly shitty parent, in which case please don't.)
> 
> Oops, look, what do you know? I wrote another Lightbringer fic! I hope you weren't too horrified by what I did here <3 Come talk to me on [Tumblr](jadedbirch.tumblr.com) b/c I love you guys.


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